Ramblings for today

I was down at the nearby mall across the office to get some pre-natal vitamins for my wife. I'm a bit short on cash these days (payday seems so far away), so I didn't get the whole quantity specified in the prescription, which was 30 tablets, or 1 bottle. I opted to get enough for two weeks, or 14 tablets for now, until payday comes around. Well, what they do is open a new pack and put the individual tablets into a separate plastic container. Looking at the smooth, pink tablets, it had no markings or any indication of what they were. Unlike Biogesic and other stuff, you'd know what it was, based on the engraved characters. I felt uneasy because I might be carrying tablets that would make you grow an extra arm, for all I knew. So I went back to the saleslady and took a look at the bottle where she got the stuff from, just to make sure that what I had bought was the same as in the pack. I wasn't about to go home and let my wife drink stuff that I wasn't sure of what it would do to her, or to our unborn child.

Fatherhood. It feels something like what one of the WWII soldiers might have felt just before they stepped off the boat and into the unknown. That, and a bit like what I felt minutes before singing during my birthday party last year. It's essentially a mix of elation and anxiety. The anticipation is already builidng up to a crescendo-- what am I going to do when the moment comes, and I need to shed all childish thoughts? The chorus from Incubus' "Nowhere Fast" seems so fitting:

Will I ever get to where I'm going?

If I do, will I know when I'm there?

If the wind blew me in the right direction, would I even care?

I would.

That verse right there is my feelings in a nutshell. It was a coming-of-age kinda thing for me in college, but now it's still appropriate, entering a new chapter in my life and all that. What I mean is that I'm heavily anticipating something big that's about to change my existence in this world, and I don't know what to do with these overwhelming feelings, rushing in a torrent of intensity.

On another note, it's been really dangerous crossing the street (by the place where I work) ever since they re-routed it into a one-way road. The cars move along real fast, and it doesn't help when there's no traffic enforcer to let us poor pedestrians cross. It's every man for himself basically. Oh sure, there's a pedestrian lane, but without someone to manage the traffic over there, it nothing more than a slab of paint on the street. I was crossing the street on the way to the mall, and this guy was nearly run over by a rampaging van. He was like, inches away from serious injury. It was a good thing the damn Starex came to a screeching halt just in the nick of time.

So HTML isn't that hieroglyphic as I thought it would be, but the surface has just been scratched of this behemoth of a language. Ever since I stumbled across the secret society of Bloggers here at work, it's like being a fledgling of a vampire coven. Making your bones (proving your worth) isn't done by draining hapless bystanders of their blood, but by learning this mysterious new language. After peeling away another layer and uncovering this facet of existence, it's all a matter of relearing how to express oneself in a new cryptic language. It reminds me of when I was learning Japanese in college. The process of discovery is part of the fun. Before it was like, "holy crap! I can ask what time it is in Japanese!". Right now it's "holy crap! I can put page breaks and color in my text!"

Anyways, I'm already veering off from the true topic at hand. The whole point of today's idle rambling is about none other than the recently elected Governor, Ah-nold Schwarkdjhsack$%$@!*.... (sorry, I keep forgetting how to spell it, and too lazy to remember for good). What can I say? The third Terminator flick was pretty badass. It didn't have the emotional pull of T2, but it still had a lot of the elements essential to be a worthy part of the franchise: unwitting civilians, great action sequences, great visual effects, and of course, Arnold asking grown men to take their clothes off ("ah need yoh clothes, yoh boots, and yoh motah-cycle...."). Given that I like T3, I still think T2 was a few notches above the rest of the trilogy. I've had the pleasure of seeing the latest one twice (at the mall and at home--pirated DVD of course), and it was more of the same old, same old kinda stuff. It did help give a sense of closure to the whole storyline though. It was a nice twist to know that judgment day actually happens, and we're left to imagine what John Connor goes through for the next decades to come. And what's up with the shades?? Is the Terminator programmed to choose a specific type of cool-looking sunglasses? He doesn't use the crappy ones.....Back in the first movie, he had those big 80's-stlye Ray Ban shades, hehe. I guess it's an inside joke more than anything else.

Come to think of it, Terminator and Matrix are both based the same premise: Man-versus-machine-set-in-a-post-apocalyptic-future. But Arnold does time-travel while Keanu is into VR. Is this Geeky or what??? I'm still learning to stretch my wings in this vast new universe, so I need to consult with the master Webmonkey(who's taken me under his care)...

*iNCUBUS*

If one band would sum up my philosophy on generally anything and everything, it would probably be this band. Their music is like Gandhi's passive resistance -- it's heavy, wickedly awesome, yet non-threatening...none of that testosterone rock : like Kid Rock (American Badass? more like American Dumbass), or Disturbed ("Oooo wacaca!! Arf Arf!!"...'nuff said.)

In the deepest depths of my existence, I hope that Incubus is not another manufactured band. They have this relaxed-yet-passionate aura that radiates from each song they play...even the weird ones. You don't have to be pissed off all the time to make good rock. Granted that rock is naturally aggressive in many ways, there are some bands out there that just seems to be pre-packaged for the demographic of seething adolescents. I personally believe it's about the music, not screaming your head off every chance you get.

It's all about breaking the mold without selling out. Some people claim they (Incubus) did just that when Morning View came out. The funky-heavy-weird-in-cool-sort-of-way sounds of their previous efforts (including S.C.I.E.N.C.E and Make Yourself) has given way to their latest alternatively-themed release. Well, reinventing yourself doesn't count as selling out to me. I still think they've stayed true to form, in terms of experimentation and the drive to try something new. Rather than choose the safe path and stick to a formula that works, they've gone ahead and zipped past the now played-out genre that is ...Rap Metal (it was good while it lasted I guess)...

More on this tomorrow - I need to shake myself from these heavy chains of procrastination and make myself useful....

The Chicken Theory

ah yes, why don't we start with a conspiracy theory that's been brewing in my head for the longest time now. It's about the connection of the Matrix to KFC (Warning: Geek stuff ahead).

Yes, that's right, as in the chicken place. Well, if you've watched Reloaded, Neo meets this guy called the Architect who's supposedly the creator of the Martix. Well, this fellow (spewing all sorts of techno-babble about fate and ramblings on the destiny of the entire human race) looks suprsingly similar to Col. Sanders, the patron saint of our beloved fried chicken.

I then remebered Mouse (the skinny dude who died from the first movie) telling Neo that everything tastes like chicken. Allow me to refresh y'all with this scene:

Mouse : That's exactly my point. Exactly. Because you have to wonder now, how did the machines really know what Tasty Wheat tasted like, huh? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like, uh..oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken for example, maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything. Maybe they couldn't...

Apoc : Shut up, Mouse.

So there. If you're following this twisted line of thought, I conclude that KFC is yet another form of control within the Matrix. I can't really fully elaborate on the details of this diabolical scheme for now, I'll be doing some more thought first.